Peter's Blog

Another day and another article against netbooks on wired.com. This time it’s much better than last time, but still. I believe expectations of the author are too big. You’ll never have fool comfort with such small device, and I would definitively not even think of writing a book on netbook. However I believe it’s quite cool to serf the net with it, if your websites have more pictures than text. Other accusation is that keyboard is cramped. Well, what do you expect from something so small, again. People, change your attitude. If something is meant to be only a little more than a Pocket PC (at least it’s mine point of view) then don’t expect it to be something else.

But most interesting thing is in this part “I haven’t given on getting a sub-$400 netbook that is really lightweight and comfortable to use. Someday the right one will come along and it could still change my life. But for now, I live with the same old me.”. Should we expect that there would be new player on the netbooks market? And Wired would advertise it. Could be, everything is possible. However my pal has told me that maybe it’s something about Psion and it’s rights to Netbook name. Hmm… Future would show us truth, I believe.

This is the title of an article from wired.com, which happens to be my favorite magazine. But this particular article is trash for me. Mainly it’s about how netbooks (like Asus EEE PC) are vulnerable for network attacks, because they’re have no security built-in. Author says that most of such computers have no antivirus installed (but how many notebooks or PCs have?) or users are simply turning them off (antivirus apps), because netbooks have too low performance to handle normal apps and antivirus at the same time (what a bullshit). Of course there is Symantec mentioned (commercial?), and I can agree that most of netbooks would not handle Symantec heavy security package. But even my Core 2 Duo regular laptop with 2GB of RAM had problems with Symantec. And it looks like Symantec knew well about the problem, because they’ve returned me money spent on Norton 360 without even asking why. But please, there are better security apps than Symantec and they don’t need such powerful hardware. Second thing if somebody is so stupid to turn off his firewall and antivirus, well, he deserves what he would get.

Another thing. He writes about corporate users that they would not want it as it’s non secure. Well, I’m able to find better reasons why corporate users don’t want it than low security. And I believe normal admin would not let such hardware to his network without proper security, same as with notebooks or regular PCs. I really don’t understand what he is talking about, same as these “experts”. My company’s Dell when I’ve unpacked it hasn’t got any antivirus software as well and it was far more expensive piece of hardware than mentioned by author 300$. And again old phrase, netbook is bad because it can’t handle software which is able to protect data from being stolen. Wow, it really looks that you need to have very powerful piece of hardware to be able to secure your data. What a crap.

OK, let’s calm down a little. At the end of this text there is mentioned that maybe it’s not so bad, because in most cases there is nothing to steal from personal computers. Well how would you know. They’re saying me that typical teenager who is using facebook has no interesting and valuable data on his hard drive? They’ve just ruined my world. According to comments under this text there is not only me angry about it. Still I think that it’s some kind of joke from Wired, to show us how some people could think. How some “experts” are not worth a penny. At least I want to believe that.

Uff. Long time there was no such long text of mine. I hope that in spite that I’m a little mad right now, it’s still understandable. And don’t worry, I’m still Wired fan, and would extend my subscription:)

I think somebody in US government has lost his mind. The new idea to improve the security in air traffic is to give every passenger Safety Bracelet. It would have built-in GPS (and also a chip with personal information about passenger) and some kind of teaser which would shock him with electricity when he would step out the line. I think it’s crazy and somebody who invented it should be prisoned. If you want to see how this bracelet looks like then here you go:

The original article about it is here “Want some torture with your peanuts?“. When I’ve read this it reminded me some old movie with Rutger Hauer. It was about prisoners in the futuristic jail which has no bars or walls. All prisoners had a special collars on their necks and when somebody tried to escape collar exploded. Maybe it would be next step. Movie was called “Wedlock” if somebody wants to watch it.

It have been a long time since my last post, but there were so many things do deal with… The main news for today is that I’ve became a Czech resident. I’m living in Brno from now and will work here also. I’ll try to write something more as soon as I get some experience in living here. For now take a look at my photos from Uherskie Hradiste (place I’ve spent first night in Czech) and the way to Brno.

I’m happy to announce that I’ve started a new project. New blog. I’ll try to write there more than here, but it would be much more about nothing:) Hope I’ll manage to run this blog for a long time and that I’ll have ideas, thoughts to write about. Enjoy!

Edit: Due to lack of time, project has been suspended some time ago.

The famous Jeremy Clarkson (host of the wonderful TV Show – Top Gear) was robbed. Someone has stolen money directly from his bank account and transferred it to the charitable organization. He has given his personal information, address and  bank account number, in his show to prove that having only such info hackers can’t do anything with you money. He did that because there was a big case in Britain with loss of about 25 millions of personal information about British, so he wanted to calm people a little. Unfortunately he was wrong and now he is sorry.